Electronica: Smart grid will save us, say CEOs

MUNICH, Germany – The traditional CEO panel discussion held on the first morning of the Electronica exhibition was asked this year to focus on just one topic: the smart grid challenge.

This gave the assembled CEOs; Carlo Bozotti, Rick Clemmer, Reinhard Ploss and Gregg Lowe, the bosses of STMicroelectronics, NXP Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor, respectively the chance to speak optimistically about market opportunities to come.

It was only at the end of the panel when some questions came from the floor that matters moved on to business topics such as the state of the general economy, the semiconductor industry, and some of the particular companies represented on the stage.

All four CEOs agreed that the smart-grid is tremendous opportunity to sell more semiconductors as the world adds intelligence to what is still, in most places, a simple means of electricity distribution. The benefit would be enhanced energy efficiency and reduced need for power source provision to cope with peak demand and the need is to make the grid a multi-way highway that transfers both power and information in multiple directions.

Infineon's Ploss described the situation. "The grid is not in bad condition but we must ask how can we use it better? Moving from ac to dc transmission, getting rid of reactive power consumption, would help. Using high-voltage dc transmission you could push energy transport up by a factor of two," he said.

Freescale's Lowe highlighted the market opportunity in sensors by pointing out that China has stated that by 2016 it will have deployed 300 million smart meters across the country. All the panelists then took turns to wax lyrical about smart domestic fixtures that could be controlled from smartphone or tablet or automatically adjust for human behavior.

Bozotti of ST made the point that in Europe much of the work has been done or is being done. Italian electricity providers have spent $2 billion installing 33 million smart meters and are now enjoying annual savings of $500 million, said Bozotti, although he agreed China is a tremendous opportunity. Later in the panel he pointed out that the financial drive to improve the grid is clear with the estimate that power outages cost the United States' economy $150 billion per year.

For Rick Clemmer, CEO of NXP, the key message is that the smart-grid adds communications and security to electricity distribution to enable greater efficiency. Ploss pointed out that the additional complexity must be made transparent to the users. "You can't have an electrical engineer come to the house to manage the power. It must be extremely easy to use, high reliability and secure from the first moment," he said using this as an argument for high semiconductor content in the smart grid. He also argued "that the smart grid can be controlled remotely is essential to make it acceptable."

A true smart grid will be virtually impregnable to intended interruption. The current east and west grids are much more vulnerable. Only Texas' grid is relatively safe. Smart grids employ alternative generation, connecting electric cars and battery arrays in non-localized areas. It's the next great technological challenge, on par with the moon landing.

I am looking forward to seeing Smart Grid IC been used in Home electronics in next 5 years. It might help us optimizing power usage. If it is integrated with " Internet of Thing", you might even control it through you "App" in smartphone. There are some key IPs needed-like embedded memory, MCU and power line communication besides power management circuits. Demand might boom up soon.

In this context "us" is semiconductor companies and electronics industry.
My understanding is that smart-grid will allow more efficient distribution of electricity thereby meaning less power stations have to be built to cope with increasing demand.
In other words smart grid means the cost of electricity could increase by less than it otherwise would.
BUT it will probably still go up in price!!!

Who is "us"? From this article I have a feling that "Smart Grids" are goldmines for semiconductor suppliers and energetic sector. End customers (even high volumes like factories) will just be charged for this needless feature. Can anyone say what is benefit of "Smart Grid" for end customer? Currently used digital power meters has already multiple features like those promised with "Smart Grids" but not enabled or hidden from end customer. For me it is just a good occasion to extort money from people.

A report addresses a "grid attack" by terrorits: http://www.govtech.com/Study-Terrorist-Attacks-Could-Devastate-Power-Grid.html
Seems there's lots of work opportunities to design reliable, secure, and lightweight power transmission systems and power transformers.

A report addresses a "grid attack" by terrorists: http://www.govtech.com/Study-Terrorist-Attacks-Could-Devastate-Power-Grid.html. Seems there's lots of work opportunities to design reliable, secure, and lightweight power transmission systems and power transformers.

A report addresses a "grid attack" by terrorits: http://www.govtech.com/Study-Terrorist-Attacks-Could-Devastate-Power-Grid.html. Seems there's lots of work opportunities to design reliable, secure, and lightweight power transmission systems and power transformers.

Storms, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, and the occasional limb on a power line will continue to disrupt power grids. Matching supply to loads, conserving energy, and keeping costs low will continue to be a struggle. A Smart Grid will help in these areas, and should speed repairs after the failures, but today the biggest evidence of a Smart Grid is a Smart Meter bolted to homes with uncertain access or interest by the homeowner. There is still a long way to go before our grid is significantly improved. On the other hand, where I work the power is only disrupted maybe once a year.